Overview
Rees Jones earned the nickname "The Open Doctor" for his work redesigning U.S. Open host courses including Bethpage Black, Torrey Pines South, and East Lake. In Scottsdale, his original work shines at Legend Trail Golf Club — a semi-private community-affiliated layout in north Scottsdale where dramatic elevation changes and views of Pinnacle Peak make it one of the more visually arresting daily-fee experiences in the region.
Design Philosophy
“Build a course you could host the U.S. Open on tomorrow — fair off the tee, demanding into the green, restorable under pressure.”
Notable Courses Outside Arizona
- Bethpage Black redesign (NY)
- Torrey Pines South redesign (CA)
- East Lake redesign (GA)
- Atlantic Golf Club (NY)
What this means for Scottsdale homebuyers
For buyers shopping the Scottsdale luxury market, a course architect’s identity is more than a credential — it is a real predictor of how the home and community will feel day-to-day. The architect’s routing decisions shape the lot layout. The bunker style and green complexity drive handicap-band suitability. The course’s difficulty rating and walkability influence the demographic mix of the membership, which in turn influences resale velocity in the surrounding real estate.Rees’s Scottsdale work is concentrated in a single project, which makes the buyer’s evaluation cleaner than it would be for a generalist architect: you can study a contained body of work and form a sharper view on whether the design vocabulary matches your eye.
The communities anchored by Rees Jones’s Scottsdale courses — Legend Trail — share a discernible character that reflects the architect’s sensibility: lot orientations that respect the natural movement of the land, view corridors that frame the desert rather than fight it, and a course-routing logic that shapes the daily walking and driving patterns of residents. Buyers who connect strongly with a specific architect’s vocabulary often find that the right Scottsdale community is whichever one sits on that architect’s most successful Arizona course. Use the community pages below to read the price tier, club model, HOA structure, and resale dynamics of each.
